A pro-life group that uncovered how the University of North Carolina was requiring students to pay for abortions under a student health care plan says the Obama administration may be ignoring the Hyde Amendment.

Last year, Students for Life of America discovered that the UNC System was automatically enrolling their students in a health care plan that covered elective abortions. After working with UNC students and leading an effective grassroots campaign, SFLA forced the UNC Administration to modify its policy and allow students to “opt-out” of the abortion coverage.

After the expose’ and the followup actions, SFLA president Kristan Hawkins said she was worried that federal funds could have been involved in paying for the abortions, contravening federal law under the Hyde Amendment…

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina sent the Department of Education a letter in October asking Obama administration officials if they were aware of the abortion coverage included in the University of North Carolina System’s mandatory student health care policy and if they could prove that taxpayer funds were not paying for the abortion coverage.

On February 15, the U.S. Department of Education answered the letter. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote, “…the Department has not issued any regulations, guidance, or other official policy with regard to the Hyde amendment, nor has the Department relayed any information regarding the Hyde Amendment to colleges and universities that participate in the Title IV and HEA programs.”

That prompts more concerns for Hawkins.

“The Department of Education is not upholding federal law which clearly states that taxpayer money is not to be used to pay for elective abortions,” she told LifeNews.com yesterday. “By not providing oversight, the Department of Education is allowing taxpayer money to fund elective student abortions at the University of North Carolina as well as in dozens of others universities across the country. Abortion is not health care and should not be a pre-requisite for learning.”